The GI Bill was paying my way through college until I either got a four-year degree or I turned 28. According to a guidance counselor I tested “off the charts at three-dimensional puzzle solving, but it was just too bad that there wasn’t anything I could do with it.” I was going to classes year-round trying different majors; searching for
something interesting that I was good at.
It was the ’60”s. The best of times, great music, and good friends to share it with. On the weekends, I went dancing in the Haight-Ashbury where I met Lars Larson. He invited me to come down to Esalen to meet all of his friends. I remarked to him; “Big Sur? I know that place. It is cold, wet, and foggy, and it is a long way from Oakland. I don’t have time to come down there. I’ll just see you when you come up here.” We went dancing on the weekends until one day he said to me “My friends don’t believe I have a girlfriend.” He did have a point. Christmas break was coming up and I told him he could have New Year’s. I drove down and met his friends, braved my first co-educational bath and we had a lovely dinner in the Lodge. I was informed that if the cook liked you, you were “somebody” and you would be allowed into the kitchen for the New Year’s Eve party.
Neal Powers was the cook.
In the kitchen was a huge circle of people with their arms around each other swaying and “Ohm-ing”. We joined the circle. Next to me was a short, 80+-year-old man with white hair and beard. Just as I started to relax, I felt his hand creeping up under my shirt. Shocked, I looked down at him and said, “Excuse Me!” He smiled and wiggled his hand up higher. I decided on revenge. I allowed him to get high enough to pin his hand against my ribs and did my level best to break his fingers. He jerked and pulled frantically trying to get away. When he finally escaped he looked up at me with such wounded reproach. I experienced a phenomenal rush of rage that swept up from my feet. I wanted to kill him in the worst way. I closed my eyes to gain control and silently admonished myself: “Now Sharon. You can not kill an 80-year-old man on your first night at Esalen. You. Just. Can’t.” I ran for it instead. Ducking out of the circle, I informed Lars I was leaving and probably never coming back, and drove home to Oakland on New Year’s Eve to escape the crazy people.
My school was Merritt Junior College, home to the Black Panthers. They demanded the board of governors create a black studies program starting the semester after Christmas break. The board thought this was a fine idea – but it was too late for this semester. How about in two semesters? The Panthers closed the college down. I showed up to attend my first class and found the parking lot deserted except for one Panther guy patrolling with a sawed-off shotgun on his shoulder. It was too late to transfer to another school.
No school meant no money. I swallowed my pride and asked Lars if I could stay with him for one semester. He was delighted and invited me to stay as long as I liked. He had built his home out of salvaged Japanese shipping crates that had washed up on the Big Sur
beaches. It was cantilevered out over the ocean, hidden within a cypress tree. There were windows all around and a balcony. You could drop things into the surf from a trap door that had a hanging ladder leading to a trail down the cliff face to the beach 200 feet below. We had kerosene lamps, a two-burner gas stove, and a metal cooler in the floor that kept the butter cold. There was a wood stove for winter. The kitchen sink rested on a bough of the cypress. I brought with me my great-grandmother’s patchwork quilt and her treadle sewing machine. I planted a garden along the edge of the cliff. The passion flower vines still grow there. Esalen’s most favored tom cat, TJ (short for Tom Jones) honored me with a visit on most mornings graciously accepting my offerings of food.
Esalen gave me work as a waitress, I had the early shift. The kitchen staff all helped me learn what to do. Neal was steady and calm and things ran smoothly. He taught me how to crack four eggs at the same time with both hands to fill up a big pot for scrambled eggs. We had short daily menus, different for each day. As each person seated themselves for breakfast, I would take their order and bring them something to drink. When it was ready, I brought their food, cleared and cleaned the tables, and set up for the next person. We kept serving until everyone had eaten breakfast, then we prepared
and served lunch. Each waitress had several tables to take care of.
Fritz Perls, MD, the founder of Gestalt Therapy, was that 80-year-old man whose fingers I had tried to break. He lived on the grounds in a beautiful stone house built especially for him. I was careful to avoid him. Whenever I saw him, I would take off up the hill moving so fast that he had no chance to catch me and say to hello – or worse. This went on for quite a while until he showed up one morning sitting at one of my tables with a triumphant grin on his face. I had to say good morning and bring him his breakfast. He sat in my section from then on. One day I asked him why he misbehaved with all the women. He admitted that he was well beyond following it up – he just wanted to see what they would do. Over time, we became friends. He invited me to sit in on his Gestalt groups. He was a great therapist.
Esalen Institute was started by two Stanford graduates, Michael Murphy and Dick Price. Esalen’s seminars were modeled on Stanford’s undergraduate program which brought in cutting-edge professors who inspired students to become creative innovators. Esalen was a grand success. It was also home to a unique community of people who ran the place and lived what they learned and taught. Dick was the soul of the place, holding enough space from saints to murderers in his heart. I considered him a dear friend.
Joan Baez brought the Big Sur Folk Festival. Ravi Shankar and George Harrison taught Indian music. The people who lived in the Big Sur hills came down to play music in the evening once or twice a week. They had been learning Conga drumming from the legendary jazz drummer, Steve Jardini. Jeffery Stewart along with Gordy Howe were
regulars. Peter Melchior and Jan Sultan often sat in. Gabrielle Roth developed her five rhythms dance from these evenings. It was excellent music and I loved dancing with the drums.
Lars suggested that I learn Esalen massage. To qualify, I had to give a perfect massage to the creator of the massage. Soon after I qualified, Esalen tapped me to teach massage workshops for them, which I did over the next five years. I practically lived at the baths. Esalen massage is not remotely concerned with anatomy or structural
balance. Instead of anatomical names, I used simple “kitchen table” terms such as legs and arms, the head, and in the middle was the tummy. I incorporated Robert Nadeau’s Aikido energy exercises and principles into the massage. It’s purpose was to induce an alpha state (deep meditation) by matching the rhythm of the massage with the breath. Long sweeping strokes connected everything to the center and breathing. Being in an alpha state for an hour or two can be life changing. John Pierrakos, MD, creator of Core Energetics told me the massage he received from me at Esalen was the highlight of his
entire life. Because of this connection with John, I did personal therapy work and studied Core Energetics with him from 1974 until 2001, when he passed. Core Energetics is an excellent foundation for helping people through the traumas revealed through Structural
Integration.
Fritz Perls was the one who discovered Dr. Ida Rolf and brought her to Esalen. She called her work “Structural Integration.” My neighbor, Pam Portugal Walatka nick-named it “Rolfing” and the name stuck. I cannot claim to have had the good sense to go looking for what became my life’s work. Structural Integration came to my community.
My first encounter with Dr. Rolf’s work was in the baths. I noticed something odd about Deborah Meadows’ legs when she stepped into the big tub. The inside of both of her legs were spectacularly black and blue. I could understand her getting one leg into trouble, but two? I asked her how she had hurt herself. She told me that it wasn’t an accident, she had gotten Rolfed. I was horrified, ‘You let them do that to you? Are you nuts?” She said her legs were so much better. I took a good, long look at her legs and told her “They look the same to me”. I decided that Ida Rolf had to be a very good talker, and if she was that good, I was having nothing to do with her. I avoided Structural Integration until I was about the last un-Rolfed body in the whole place.
Fritz changed my mind about Structural Integration. One day we spent the whole morning at the baths talking. We decided to go to lunch together to continue the conversation. We climbed the 300 foot hill up to the Lodge and when we were almost to
the top Fritz stopped and asked me if I minded if we sat on the bench that overlooked the South coast. Of course I did not mind. Perhaps he needed a rest. So we sat in silence, gazing at the beauty that was Big Sur in the sun. He remarked after a time, “It is sure nice to sit here when I don’t have to.” I asked him what he meant by that and he told me that he used to have angina so bad that he had to sit on this bench for a good twenty minutes before he could make it up the rest of the way up to the Lodge. Since he had gotten Rolfed, he could make it to the top without stopping. So I asked him “Is that Rolfing really any good?” He replied; “Let me put it this way; Before Rolfing, I had just enough energy to go from my house down to the Lodge for breakfast and to my group. After lunch, I went down to the to the baths for the afternoon. I could make it up the hill to the Lodge for dinner and my group, then up to my house for bed. If in the morning I forgot something at my house, it stayed forgotten. I did not have enough energy to go back and get it. After I got Rolfed, I could go anywhere I wanted.”
If he could survive Rolfing at 80+ years old. then I, in my early 20’s, should be able to survive it.
People from Esalen who trained with Dr. Rolf often added their own favorite things into the work. For example, Will Schulz, the creator of Encounter, offered an hour of Rolfing followed by an hour of guided fantasy. I wanted to get close to the original work. Jan Sultan was just out of class and was a friend. I became Jan’s first client after class. Poor Jan! I was quite a mess and I had no idea. Dr Rolf once asked me: “How did someone so young get into so much trouble?” After Jan’s first session, my back seized up for a solid week. I could hardly breathe or walk. I put a mattress in the hallway by the bathroom door so I would not have far to go. Finally, Buzz and Mario decided that enough was enough and they loaded me and my mattress into the back of their pickup truck and dropped me off near Jan’s door. It took me about 10 minutes to crawl to the door. I remember knocking on the bottom of his door, wondering if he was home. I asked him, “Does this happen to everyone?” He suggested that I come in for some more work. I replied, “Only if you think it will help.” It did help. I laughed and cried my way through those ten sessions discovering the profound joy of reclaiming my body and my life from physical trauma. My history replayed itself in vivid living color with sound. It was so real I could feel the sunlight on my skin and hear what people were saying from very long ago. It was a process of revelation and liberation. I will always be grateful to Jan for his good work.
Soon after I finished my ten sessions, I fell in love with Hector Prestera. We moved into the most southern of the three units overlooking the sea near the creek. I planted a 100 by 30 foot garden of flowers and vegetables along the fence which later became part of
the big garden started by Selig’s lady, Barbara. By coincidence, Barbara and I started both of our gardens on the same day with deliveries of big dump trucks of black compost, though the shell mound midden dirt the Native Esselen Tribe had left was rich enough on its own. It would grow anything! We once tried to dig to the bottom of the shell mound. We got at least twelve feet down before we gave up.
Hector had gotten Rolfed about the same time I had. Because he was a medical doctor, Dr. Rolf invited him to train with her, saying that because he was living at Esalen, he might have an open mind. Class was in Los Angeles. Hector told me she announced on the first day of class that she was not training any more women, no one under 140 pounds, everyone was required to have a college degree, and be at least 26 years old. I went to meet her the first week of class. She invited me to have tea with her. I suspect she used me to escape from the class for a little while. In the kitchen, I confessed that I
had never had tea and had no idea how to make it. She showed me how to make tea the proper British way. She warmed the teapot with hot water and then poured it out, refilled it with more hot water, added the tea bags, and placed a tea cozy around the pot to steep
for a little while. She poured two cups for us. We added milk to the tea and ate homemade cookies with it. We talked about – nothing much. After about 20 minutes, she said she had better return to her class. She was really nice, not at all scary or mean and ferocious as people had led me to believe from their stories about her.
About two weeks later the thought occurred to me that it would be so much more interesting to work on people’s structure than doing a repetitive pattern like massage. I decided to ask her if she would train me. If she said yes, I expected her to tell me to go get a college degree, gain some weight, and come back when I was old enough.
I showed up one afternoon late in the day and asked Dr. Rolf if she would train me. She looked at me without saying a word for the longest time. I came close to telling her I had changed my mind, but I wanted to hear what she had to say – positive or negative – since
I probably would remember it for the rest of my life. I stood firm and waited. She completely surprised me when she turned to her secretary, Rosemary Feitis, and declared: “I’ll train her. Put her in the next class.”
The next class was in two weeks in Big Sur at Jan Brewer’s River House. Hector was to Practition and I was to Audit and Practition in back-to-back classes without a break in the summer of 1970. Her prerequisites for everyone were to read between 3 and 5 anatomy books and write her a paper. I assumed that she expected me to read the books and write the paper in the two weeks before class. I actually started to try to do this. However, after it took me four days to read the first four pages of the first book, I realized that I was not going to make it. I went to her told her that I was not going to be able to get my paper finished before class. She gave me a long look, but then, very kindly, she told me.: “Well, I didn’t think you would.” She told me that I could write my paper after class. I was much relieved. I did not realize she had something different in mind for me: I was to become “one of her artistic experiments”.
As an auditor, my job was to learn how to see, whatever that meant. I looked and looked some more. When she got a change and asked “ Did you all see that?” I would quietly say, “No.” and she would look over at me. Trying to learn to see was exhausting. Some of my classmates were looking in one of the anatomy books while watching a session pointing out and naming various features. I assumed I was supposed to learn anatomy during the class and this seemed like a good way to do it. I picked up the book to try it out. She caught me immediately and told me to “Put that book down!” I went back to attempting to see. Lunchtime was my time off so I took my lunch and an anatomy book and started to go outside. She saw me and told me: “ Put that book down! If I see you with another anatomy book in your hands I will throw you out of class!” I put the book down, very perplexed. I believed I needed anatomy to learn how to do the work. Why would she put me in class only to make sure that I failed? Later that afternoon she had pity on me and came over to very kindly tell me that she did not want me to know any anatomy – when she had developed this work she did not know any anatomy – she had
only learned anatomy to be able to talk to the doctors and what we worked on wasn’t in the books anyway. She wanted me to learn to do the work the same way she had.
During her third hour demonstration, I finally saw something change. She moved a hip several inches. I grabbed the leg of the student sitting next to me (Bill Williams, our Ph.D. Psychologist) and shook him saying, “Did you see that! Did you see that?” She looked over at me a moment and went back to work. I realized what I was doing to poor Bill, and let go of his leg. Most embarrassed, I quietly apologized to him. From that moment on I watched her like a hawk.
During my Practitioner training, she taught me differently than anyone else. She would stop me many times in a session to ask me where I was going next. I would point to the place and she would confirm it. She would have me feel an area and then she would work and have me feel it again. She would have me put my hands on someone with her hands on top of mine and she would work through me so I could feel the tissue changing. Going deeper did not mean pushing harder. She did not leave tissue damage. When she worked on me, if something was painful, she would ask me for the history of what had happened. When I recalled the memories of the incident, the discomfort disappeared and the tissue would normalize. It was a cooperative process.
When I understood how much I could change a human body, I suddenly realized that I had a very big problem: I was certain I would leave people in much worse shape than when they started because I knew I had no idea where things belonged. The only decent
thing for me to do was to drop out of the training. I spent all day trying to find the words to tell Dr. Rolf I had to quit. She had been so kind to me, making an exception to train me and I really did not want to disappoint her. I loved the work but I did not see how I could
continue. She noticed my distress and sat down next to me, patted me on the knee, and said, “There, there, dear. I can tell that something is troubling you. Would you like to tell me what it is?” I told her I was afraid that I would leave people much worse off because I did not know where “right” was. She replied, “Don’t worry. It always goes home.” I asked, “Always?” She said, “Yes, always.” I told her, “I can live with that.”
Dr. Rolf let me have extra time to finish my sessions, often half an hour. Most days ended with everyone waiting around for me to finish. Al Drucker asked her, “How come Sharon always gets the extra time?” She replied, “Sharon gets the extra time because I can see that she is doing something.”
She would also tap people on the shoulder saying, “ You. Go sit down. Sharon, you get in there and show them how to do that.” She must have enjoyed the irony of sending in a young girl who knew zero anatomy to show two Doctors, a Ph.D. Psychologist, and an
Aero-Space Engineer what to do. Irony did not make me friends among my classmates, but it did make me understand that I had what it took to do this work.
On the River House tapes, you can hear her remark about me while I was out of the room: “Someday that girl will be somebody. No, I mean it… someday she will be somebody.”
I once said to her that when I was her age I hoped I would be a good as she was. Her reply: “You should be better than I am. I trained you”.
I consider her to be the kindest person I have ever known. Who else would dive down in there with you into your worst, darkest moments and drag you out of there screaming and crying, lost in dreadful past memories – so you could grow beyond the limitations of your traumas.
Her gift to us is beyond any price and beyond any blessing. It allows us to be better and to do better than we ever would have if simply left washed up on the shores of life, broken and damaged beyond all reason and beyond our ability to heal.
I have not found anything more worth doing.
Sharon Wheeler
December of 2020
Published in “Structural Integration The Basic Series in All Its Abundance An Homage to Dr. Ida Rolf’s Work Inspired by John Lodge” https://rolfguild.ch/JohnLodgeBook.html